Sony's Stringer Calls PlayStation Network Outage a "Hiccup"

Sony's CEO, Howard Stringer, did several interviews today, with Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He said that Sony is no closer to finding the culprit behind the attack, and is focusing on security challenges ahead. He told Bloomberg, "Nobody's system is 100 percent secure. This is a hiccup in the road to a network future." The PlayStation Network went down on April 20th, and only came back online on Saturday. Sony is still working to sort out issues with the Network and to regain its users' trust.

Sony's Kazuo Hirai communicated with Stringer before shutting down PSN, and String told Bloomberg, "Kaz and I together worked out what we need to do." In the Financial Times interview, he defended what some say was Sony's sluggish communication with customers on the breach. "We reported faster than anyone we can find. We had to know what was being stolen, rather than leaking information out piece by piece and panicking the customers," he said. The attack was definitely professional and sophisticated, and the attackers covered their tracks thoroughly. Stringer added, "This was an unprecedented situation for all of us. This was the largest cyber attack probably in history so far."

He also told the Wall Street Journal that keeping a network secure is a "never-ending process."

"It's one of those dynamic situations where the bad guys get better and the good guys have to keep getting better too," Stringer said.

Though Sony has been working with the FBI to investigate the attack, the only thing discussed publicly so far is the mention of Anonymous in one of the SOE servers. Anonymous had stridently denied involvement with the attack, saying that it did participate in denial of service attacks, but that was the extent of the involvement.

Sony has released the details of its Welcome Back Package for customers, and Stringer has high hopes for customers sticking with PSN: "PlayStation Network subscribers are more forgiving because they are essentially more loyal and understanding of the situation more than anybody else."

Our full coverage of the PlayStation Network situation is here.

[via PC Mag]